ryan on the ticket, it turned out not to be toxic for seniors and won the senior vote and, of course, the counter to that is like you just said that, yes, they managed to muddy the waters on medicare basically demagoguing against the president for the cutsç to medicare so what's the truth here? do you think that republicans feel sort of emboldened on entitle reform, this it's no longer the third rail? and are they -- is it legitimate to feel that way? >> well, you know, i don't know what they think. they keep changing their minds what they like and don't like. i imagine some of them feel like the politics changed and maybe in a small way it has. you know, maybe it is safe to talk about making changes to medicare. but like you said, i mean, there are two kinds of changes. there are the changes that save health care. that save money in health care. you know? these kind of pilot programs and president obama as you pointed out has proposed a few more of these and then there are changes to benefits. there are cuts to benefits. these are the ideas that you hear from republicans. you know